Read My Beautiful Failure for Free Online Page B

explain, so it worked for us both.
    Margaret tapped her watch. My booklet said to limit most calls to five minutes.
    “I should go. But it’s been great talking with you. Learning about . . . Seth and everyone.”
    My pleasure, dude.

18.
splashdown
    I waited for Margaret and Richie to finish their calls. Margaret put her line on hold and told Richie and me to do the same. Then she touched my shoulder and asked if I was okay.
    Richie bumped my fist and said I was initiated. He asked how I liked my call from the Carl Planet. It had been awkward, I told him, because I was never into comics the way Carl was. And the call hadn’t been what I expected, because Carl wasn’t upset or suicidal. He wasn’t even slightly sad.
    Richie said the important thing was that I had listened.
    I told them the video had made me think everyone who called would be suicidal.
    Hold on there, Margaret cautioned me. She said newbies often came in thinking they were Superman, but they rarely got to save anyone the first night. Or even the first month. Some people got a Likely the first day, sheexplained, and others worked at Listeners for years without a single Likely.
    Margaret was right, Richie added. We couldn’t come in to work and only value the Likelies. We had to think of each Incoming as equally important, even if they called just to talk about the weather.
    I asked him why, if an Incoming wanted to talk about the weather, he or she called us and not someone else.
    Maybe there was no one else, Richie said. Maybe they were lonely and isolated.
    Or maybe they were tired of putting up a front for other people, Margaret suggested. Maybe Listeners was the only place these Incomings could be themselves.
    I said nothing for a minute. I was beginning to feel like I had made a bad decision. Should I have started a band with Gordy after all?
    Keep plugging, my ListMates told me. I would get a feel for it after a while. I should keep listening, they said. If not for the callers, then for my CFM. I thought of Dad then. Dad was at home, painting industriously, having the time of his life. How had it worked out that he was happy with what he was doing and I wasn’t?
    Margaret opened her line and we started again.

19.
call 2
    L isteners. Can I help you?”
    How old are you?
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t give out personal information. Anyway, I’d rather hear what’s going on with you.”
    You’re just a kid, aren’t you?
    A man’s voice—smooth, like a radio announcer.
    “How are things going?”
    You sound really young.
    “My name’s Billy. Would you like to tell me your first name?”
    Are you wearing boxers or briefs?
    My hand went instinctively to my thigh. “I’m sorry?”
    Right now. Do you have on boxers or briefs?
    “Do I . . . ?”
    You know what I’m talking about.
    “I have to go.” Click.

20.
lowered expectations
    I continued for a few more calls. The handbook said I should get people to discuss their feelings, but two Incomings refused to name a single feeling, and I wasn’t sure they even had any. One said his major feeling was discomfort because he had never talked to me before. Another asked if she could talk to Margaret or Richie instead. When I finished that call, I looked at the clock. Eight forty-five. My phone rang.

21.
call 12
    L isteners. Can I help you?”
    Yep. It’s Jenney. I had a really tough day today.
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    I walked past Hawthorne State and I started thinking about all that stuff again, about everything I’m missing.
    “Everything you’re missing?”
    Yeah, the fact that I’m supposed to be in school now and I’m not. I just can’t face school in the condition I’m in. But I saw all these Staties on their way to a game or a rally or something, and they have big groups of friends and lots of ways to fill their time. They have everything I was supposed to have, everything I was going to have, but . . . My future got taken away from me.
    I heard a soft clicking